Chaos and Conjurations

Chapter 3-2

In another life, a few months or a year previously, he might’ve still been one of them. Losing himself in the sweetness of stories and syllables and histories, working on his final apprentice’s showcase casting with old Sir Roderick, lingering over runic translations and working out the extensions to the fire-protection spells around the Library’s volumes. Not carefree, precisely. But happy.

Theo, standing alone in the main hall of the Library of the Royal College of Wizardry, breathed in the dry sorrowful scents of old paper, book-bindings, secrets and archives. He felt paper-thin as well, scraped and turned and stretched into yet another use. A palimpsest, being written over.

He breathed out, and waved a hand, murmuring, “Lux,” under his breath. The lamps came on, all across the room: glowing amber globes against the gloom of the day and the cold.

The assistants came in a few moments before the Library properly opened for the day. Theo had retreated to his office, a tiny book-lined nook behind the staircase on the main floor, to deal with the research proposals and to stare blankly at demonstration plans drawn up by the person he’d been a month ago. He did need to go down to the archives, but he needed to deal with his job first.

He could do that. It was routine. Comforting. Besides, Headmistress Campbell had already sent a little Shout over to welcome him back to work, with the barely-hidden implication that Theo should be getting on with that and not wasting time with any unproven conspiracy theories about cultists.

The most senior of his assistants, Padmini Patel, appeared at his door in a rustle of colorful robes over practical trousers. She did knock, though Theo’d heard her coming. He stopped staring at his own notes about movable type and the flexibility of spell components. “Sorry, did you need me?”

“Not specifically. But we did have something for you.” Padmini held out one hand, with a tiny package in it. The gold hints in her long dark braid caught the lamplight and shimmered, swaying; her eyes were fond. She was marvelous at linguistics and proto-Indo-European morphology as spellcraft, in Theo’s professional opinion. “We know you don’t like to make a fuss, Mr Burnett. Theo. But you’re so hardly ever ill, and you’ve been away for three whole weeks, and we know you—you weren’t well, the Headmistress said, and there’re all the rumors, and…so we thought…well, this is from us. I did the replication and Lio did the motion charm and Jane added the kitten because Jane likes kittens.”

She offered up the package; Theo took it.

It proved to be a handheld enchanted replica of a single-page illustration from a fourteenth-century book of hours, a portrait of the scribe himself; in gold leaf and blue and scarlet ink, the tiny robed figure wrote a line on a miniature scroll, paused, wrote another line, repeated. A white kitten wreathed around his feet, vanished, reappeared. The sequence only lasted seconds, and the movement charm would eventually wear out; but it was lovely, precise and detailed and literary.

Theo, amazed, had to clear his throat. “That’s…this is…thank you, Padmini. And everyone else, of course.” He set the miniature on the bookshelf beside his desk, at eye level, where the tiny scribe could do his work amid Theo’s current collection of antiquarian preservation techniques. He also cleared his throat again. Oddly scratchy.

“The Library’s not the same without you,” Padmini said. “Do you want me at the front desk, today? While you settle back in? Or do you want to be there?”

“I…would you do it? I would, but I’ve…” He gestured at the piled-up requests on his desk. “And I’ve got to go down to the Archives in a bit. Not for anything difficult,” he added, as her eyebrows drew together, “some history regarding our holdings and some manuscript provenance.” Technically true, if misleading. “Dull, really, I promise.”

“Are we allowed to remind you about overwork and exhaustion?”

“No. Has Peter Newsome brought his last textbook in yet?”

“No. Shall I send a reminder?”

“Have Lio do it if you’re busy. Did someone tell Professor Haru the new almanacs came in…oh, drat, last week, apparently…why didn’t anyone follow up…”

“I’ll do that. Theo…” Padmini hesitated. “We did miss you. Are you…I hope I’m not intruding, but are you…well? And your Captain Tourmaline?”

Theo blinked, recalled that in fact she’d met Henry, and tried to sort out how to compress the whole of magical combat and healing and curses and backlash into one answer. “Henry’s lovely. And I’m much better, thank you.”

“We’re happy for you,” Padmini said, and went off to handle the front desk and the incoming wave of student and scholar questions and checkouts and returns, the day to day routines and requirements of the Library, the rhythmic clockwork ticking on.

Theo looked at his tiny scribe, the presence of affection and appreciation. He belonged here. This life, this world. Theo Burnett, magical librarian. Home, at the College. Where he’d thought he’d spend the rest of his days.

Henry’s presence rustled at the back of his head, a thin green-gold scratching.

Henry was using magic—nothing large, only a simple embrace of the weather and the earth and the elements, moving between raindrops, breathing the scent of dampness and wet leaves and stone, not growing wet himself but letting water flow into thirsty roots and grasses and gardens along his path. Theo could feel the delicate shy joy in Henry’s heart and soul and magic: being this, feeling this, the completion of self, the wholeness that Henry’d all but lost.

Henry was a magician. And no magician, after all, could avoid using magic for long. Like air in lungs, like drinking water, cool and clean and vital.

The sensation scraped the barest hint of fingernails across healing places in Theo’s head, light as feathers but ceaseless. Those particular magical channels were still fragile, and hadn’t got much better; he’d recovered from the general backlash, but the tangle of himself with Henry’s power had been sudden and violent.

It did not hurt yet, though it would if Henry did something larger, or if the slow relentless scratching built up over enough time. But he had been telling the truth when he’d said that this was manageable; and he would not ask Henry to give up this much reclaimed self.

Theo rubbed his temple distractedly, scribbled answers to the scholar in New York and the one in Paris—he knew them both, so no interviews necessary for those two; the others would be more complicated—and read over the proposal from the one in Edinburgh who wanted to study the accounts of Arctic exploration and the Snowblind Tomes. Those were, as the name suggested, relatively dangerous texts; Theo wasn’t sure the man had sufficiently demonstrated knowledge of proper precautions in the proposal.

His head ached a bit more. Henry was…doing something. Not too much more, but more thoughtful about it: standing outside the large imposing neoclassical façade of government and administration, considering new positions and rewards for service with a soldier’s irony and a spy’s professionalism.

If not for being technically invalided out—and likely, as they’d all thought, to die—Henry might’ve been offered one of those positions, a place in the world after war, a role in the Cabinet or at Wellington’s side. The Corps had been disbanded, because nobody wanted a standing force of military-trained magicians and because only a handful of them remained alive in any case. But Captain Tourmaline, a dashing wounded veteran with quick strategy and reliable instincts behind clear blue eyes, should’ve been celebrated. Feted. Adored.

Instead everyone’d believed there was nothing to be done for him.

And Henry had come back to the College out of pure desperation, and had stumbled into Theo’s library and Theo’s quiet life; and was now leaning quietly against a pillar and watching how many messengers came in and out of the Office of Magical Liaisons, and how long they remained, and whether any notes went out…

Henry was thinking hard about something, or someone. Their bond wasn’t telepathy and Theo couldn’t tell much beyond that. But it affected the magic, a bit, as his own curiosity tugged at Henry’s focus. They both winced, Henry with an unconscious echo of Theo’s scuffed scratched spots.

Theo put down his pen. He couldn’t think about academic scholarship, presentations and proposals, research that only a handful of fellow specialists would ever read. If he and Henry were right, if there truly was a hidden danger, a threat to English magic or magic itself—

He wasn’t Henry. He wasn’t even Dominic, who was off someplace doing unspecified medical things to Sir Geoffrey’s body. But he was a librarian.

He locked his office, checked the lock a second time just to be sure, and waved at Padmini—she was busy helping a first-year find a book—and went down to the vaults, straightening his coat-sleeves along the way.

He did not turn into the oldest and more dangerous sections, where he’d once taken Henry to look for answers. He followed pale green and white lighting through old Saxon stone, sixteenth-century renovations, cool faux-Italianate hallways; he kept book-wards up here more for preservation than out of any concerns over the texts themselves. College histories and Library records did not attempt to corrupt or seduce anyone, at least not anyone not enamored of book provenance and acquisitions receipts.

The College had its copies of the Aiwass cult mysteries and codices and ledgers; those were the ones he and Henry had used to break the code and the curse. But there must be one more, for someone to have used the spell on Henry. Theo had thought all those copies destroyed; but perhaps there’d be a record, a book missing, something they’d failed to acquire, something borrowed but not returned.

He found the room he’d been looking for, off a deceptively short-seeming side hallway: subdued walnut shelves, catalogues, card-boxes greeted him.

The lives of other librarians. The stories of this place, of knowledge itself. The beating home of bibliomancy. The other answer to Theo’s heart, when that wasn’t Henry’s smile.

He said aloud, “I’m here with a question,” and the accumulated weight of knowledge and notes and entries and old book-magic perked up to listen.

Theo put a hand on the closest catalogue-cupboard. Pictured the ledgers, the ones they knew about. Described them, precisely, in his head: shaped in words, adjectives, details. I need this history. Who might’ve used them, where they came from. Any others, any mentions.

The shelves sighed like the sea, distressed. They knew those were perilous texts.

Yes, Theo said firmly. If you would, please.

Cards grumbled and shuffled. A heavy volume of records inched out from the shelf. Taking it, Theo saw that it was the most recent listing of scholars who’d consulted those texts. There weren’t many entries; the single volume seemed to go back centuries.

“Thank you,” he said aloud to the room, and took that and the cross-referencing cards over to the small round table, and got to work looking for patterns, connections, threads to follow.

He did not expect anything as obvious as a note in the record saying, Ha, I plan to do Great Evil and Curse my Fellow Magicians, and here is my Villainous Name and Last Known Dwelling-Place! though that might’ve been nice. He was hoping to find some evidence of another trail, another copy, a name he recognized.

He did not.

At least not within the last ten years.

The Library guarded the proscribed archives well, and no one touched them. Theo himself, upon accepting the job and doing inventory. Someone named Hilda Frowe, a hundred years ago, who seemed to’ve been looking into histories of magical societies in Britain. Sir Roderick Holles, of course, upon taking charge of the Library himself, before Theo’s own updated version.